Spain Back On Top

Image Source: cellercanroca.com

Bet that’s a title you didn’t expect, especially with Spain’s unemployment at an all-time high. But one thing Spain is currently famous for is their food. They do it with all the mystery, sensuality and intimacy one could hope for. The Spanish are imaginative yet traditional. They understand the total sensorial experience of eating, and they have passion. In the list of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants, Spain had three restaurants in the Top 10, and five in the Top 50.

Taking out top spot is El Celler de Can Roca, a restaurant run by the three Roca brothers. Perfecting their craft for over 27 years, they’ve slowly been climbing up the rankings. It’s a family affair, which each brother bringing a different set of skills to the table. One heads the kitchen, the other is the pastry chef, and the third is a sommelier and front of house. They pay homage to the legacy of those gone before them whilst shaking things up with the use of new techniques, and their aim is to evoke memories with their food. Rich, complex and compelling. One for the list.

A Nod to Nollywood

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As Bollywood celebrates its 100th birthday and enjoys status as the largest film producer in the world, the second biggest film industry is one you’ve probably never even heard of. It’s not American, Chinese, British, or French – though chances are you’re more likely to have watched a movie made in one of those countries. And though we’ve got terrific filmmakers, New Zealand has a long way to go if it’s going to match the output of this small nation.

Nigeria’s Nollywood is going gangbusters, producing a whopping 2,500 movies a year for viewers across Africa, hence putting it in second place. Generally, the average Nigerian film costs about $15,000 to make. When you compare that with big Hollywood budgets (Django Unchained, which I rapped about recently, had a production budget of $100 million), you’ll understand why Nigerian’s are making films with what they’ve got. They film using affordable digital equipment and time on set lasts no more than 2 weeks. Final cuts bypass cinema, go straight to DVD, and the quick turnaround allows for movie-makers to create films based on local, topical issues and melodrama (“think Bollywood via Tyler Perry” – Time), which is very popular with viewers.

In 2003, Saatchi & Saatchi produced the film Critical Assignment for Guinness Africa as part of a campaign featuring the “African James Bond”, Michael Power, and at that time the Nigerian film industry was still pretty young. At 15 years old, it’s still very much a teenager, but there is truth that youth can teach us. With passion, the focus is more on doing than planning. It’s about getting ideas out there and circulating in the market. Failing fast, learning fast, fixing fast. And just making things happen.

Worst Job in the World

Image Source: sites.csn.edu

Recently CareerCast released a list of the worst jobs in the United States in 2013. Since then, Lapham Quarterly released a matrix of the 13 worst jobs of the last 2,000 years. The matrix looks at jobs in regard to how difficult, tedious, disgusting, and treacherous they were/are. Some of the jobs in the list include:

• Banquet Attendant (50AD), responsible for cleaning up guests’ vomit and holding chamber pots for them to urinate into.


• Viking Egg Collector (900AD), responsible for climbing down cliffs to steal eggs from seabirds, using ropes made of stinging nettle.


• Food Tester (1520AD), it’s the gallows for you if a Royal consumed tainted food.


• Leech Gatherer (1835AD).


• Subway Pusher (2010AD), responsible for pushing Toyko’s rush hour subway commuters into packed trains.


• Merchant Banker (2013AD), oops… I made this up…

After looking at these jobs, being a newspaper journalist (ranked the top worst job in CareerCast list) doesn’t look too bad.

Hackers vs Programmers

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I’ve often said that at Saatchi & Saatchi we prefer Outlaws to Sheriffs, Pirates to the Navy and Hackers to Programmers.

The Saatchi & Saatchi Creative Quorum in Singapore - five executive creative directors from the Asia Pacific who drive new creative thinking across the region - defined this for us.

1. A hacker beats the system.
   A programmer maintains the system.


2. A hacker is trying to get in.
   A programmer is trying to stop things getting in.


3. A hacker does things because he believes in them.
   A programmer does what he is supposed to.


4. A hacker changes the way things are.
   A programmer tries to keep the status quo.


5. A hacker is agile.
   A programmer is a small cog in a big slow machine.


6. A hacker has many points of attack.
   A programmer has one job.


7. A hacker has to be fast.
   A programmer doesn’t.


8. A hacker is self-reliant.
   A programmer relies on others.


9. A hacker finds paths that don’t exist.
   A programmer guards the old ones that already do.


10. A hacker is about interesting.
    A programmer is about being perfect.

A Song In My Heart

Image Source: news.sciencemag.org

When Lovemarks was created, one of the key elements that I could not leave out of the equation was Sensuality. The senses of sight, sound, touch, taste and smell have such an effect on our emotions that to leave them out would be simply unthinkable. Sound in the form of music has its roots in poetry, and in my opinion, the best songs always tell the best stories.

It is true that we don’t need music to live. It’s not like food - it’s not intrinsic to our survival – but it seems to have been helpful in human evolution. It’s also very good for the soul.

There’s a terrific story in Science of a neuroscientist who just had to study the effect of music on our brains after she was compelled to pull over while driving after hearing Johannes Brahms's "Hungarian Dance No. 5". Her name is Valorie Salimpoor, and with other researchers from McGill University in Montreal, what she has discovered is that when we have an emotional response to a song, we also have a direct intellectual one too.

The intellectual reward we get from music is pattern recognition. When music develops in a way that is slightly novel, but still in line with our brains predictions, we tend to like it a lot. Salimpoor describes it as something of an “intellectual conquest”. This, potentially, tapped in a brain mechanism that was vital for our evolutionary process and is related to our “ability to recognize patterns and generalize from experience, to predict what’s likely to happen in the future — in short, the ability to imagine.”

This explains why music is such a vital ingredient in film and in television advertising. Music creates heart. Music is a direct route to both the brain and the heart.

A Winner’s Mentality

Image Source: inc.com

I’ve been interested in ‘winning’ for a long time. Thirteen years ago I co-wrote a book that looked at how the world’s top sports teams nurtured Peak Performance so that they could maintain their winnings streaks.

If you haven’t noticed already, I love sport and believe that it has many lessons to teach us about how to be our best. It has it all. Highs and lows. Community, tenacity, commitment. The crucial importance of taking action when the right moment strikes; and what to do in the face of failure.

So when I came across this article from blogger Geoffrey James on getting yourself in the mental state to win, I thought it was on the money.

Here are some out takes:

• See the moments coming: Be prepared when it counts. Don’t run into the day blindly.


• Adopt a winner’s physiology: How you look affects how you feel. Stand up tall. Look people in the eye.


• Visualize the winning outcome: Lots of runners imagine themselves crossing the finish line. It helps them get from where they are to where they want to be.


• Mentally rehearse what you’ll say and do: Now that you’ve seen yourself past the finish line, what are the steps you need to take to get there?


• Disconnect from goals and results: Be in the moment.


• Take action: Make things happen!